Report: Dozens pass out from heat at Obama campaign event

Dozens of supporters passed out from the extreme heat at an Obama campaign event in Pittsburgh on Friday.

Obama was speaking outdoors at Carnegie Mellon University as part of his two-day campaign bus tour through the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and according to multiple reports on Twitter, people were being carted off on stretchers or leaving the event to seek shade.

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AccuWeather said the temperature was 98 degrees at the time of the speech, but that it felt like 106.

The soaring temperatures have been a strange backdrop for the president’s bus tour, as Obama has appeared predominantly outdoors and can be seen pouring sweat at times. It didn’t appear that the president cut his stump speech, which went on for more than half an hour, short because of the heat.

Also on Friday, a senior Obama administration official addressed the record-breaking heatwaves hitting some parts of the country, as well as the wildfires ravaging Colorado, saying it was altering the perceptions of climate change in the United States.

“Many people around the world are beginning to appreciate that climate change is under way, that it’s having consequences that are playing out in real time and, in the United States at least, we are seeing more and more examples of extreme weather and extreme climate-related events,” said Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.